An armourer

By Shakespeare's day armour was virtually useless in actual
war, because of the new efficiency of
firearms*, but armour was still
used for ceremonial occasions such as
tournaments. In Henry IV,
Part One, Hotspur speaks scathingly of a "perfumed" lord
who "but for these vile guns,/. . . would himself have been a
soldier" (1.3.62-3).

Armour is a powerful symbol of the exterior that differs from
the person wearing it. In Troilus and Cressida,
Hector pursues a Greek who is wearing particularly gorgeous
armour; when he has killed him, he remarks: "Most putrefied
core, so fair without [outside], / Thy goodly armour thus
hath cost thy life" (5.8.1-2).

Armour also plays an important symbolic role in this scene
from Antony and Cleopatra: